Member Rating

P&O Azura Cruise

Sail Date:
March 2012

Destination:
Southern Caribbean

Embarkation:
Barbados

My wife and I were on the Azura for the Caribbean cruise, March 3rd to March 17th. This was our first cruise with P&O but we have cruised with both Fred Olsen and Cunard before this cruise.
Firstly the Azura is a very large ship, with up to 3500 passengers, clearly with so many passengers there are going to be both good and bad points to the cruise.
By far the worst thing is the food, particularly in the Peninsular restaurant. After the first 4 days we stopped using the restaurant, in our opinion it was very poor. Over cooked, poor quality fish and meats (tough, dry and inedible) and staff that were not really interested. I've had airline food that was better than this, now that really is the pits.
The other dining options were very good, but you do pay an additional premium (Up to Â£29 per person per meal!) to dine at them, also they get booked up very quickly after passengers discover how bad the Peninsular restaurant food is. Another option used by a sizable More
proportion of the passengers is the self-service restaurant, here most nights had an additional dinning theme Thai, Indian, Mexican etc. The food was o'k similar to Butlins, never mind the quality feel the width, if you want lots food on your plate and a relaxed atmosphere with no evening dress code this will suit you.
On the plus side the entertainment was excellent, very good acts and an excellent on board Theatre, the other entertainment venues were also good but were easily overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of passengers on board.
The cabin was as described in the brochure, the cabin stewards were attentive and helpful, little extra touches highlighted that some crew did try to please.
You should be advised that some of the Islands you visit are quite small with limited resources, on more than one occasion we docked at more or less the same time as other large cruise ships docked, this resulted in some 5000+ people all descending on these small resorts over a short period of time, just too much!
Would I go again? Well yes, but not with such a large ship and most unlikely with P&O. Less